A novel azeotropic distillation for
sulfuric acid recovery, which
uses organic solvents as entrainers, is proposed. This new distillation
process may provide significant energy savings. Vapor–liquid
equilibria (VLE) data were determined by the quasi-static ebulliometric
method for the following systems at (30, 60, and 90) kPa: (1) sulfuric
acid + water + ethanol; (2) sulfuric acid + water + butyl acetate;
and (3) sulfuric acid + water + butyl acetate + ethanol. Through the
use of the OLI software, a chemical model was established via regressing
the experimental data to obtain the mixed solvent electrolyte (MSE)
model parameters. The average absolute deviations of boiling points
for all systems are only 1.34 K. The new model with newly obtained
parameters was successfully applied to predict the VLE for the sulfuric
acid + water + butyl acetate ternary system at constant pressure,
providing important VLE information for the recovery of spent sulfuric
acid by this new azeotropic distillation technology.